BCM 2010 Changelog

[Jim D]

Hello,

Is there a version change log available for BCM 2010 Beta?

I downloaded the beta a few days ago and I'm anxious to see what is new in
it from BCM 2007 but would love to see the complete list rather than have to
self discover everything.

Also, can anyone recommend the best place to provide feedback for the beta?
After installing the Office 2010 beta a "Smiles" and "Frown" icon in added to
the task tray which can be used to send in positive and negative feedback but
I'm not sure if this is only meant for the core office suite.

Just for kicks, here are some features I am hoping are available in the new
version of BCM.

1. Ability to store email file attachments in a contacts communications
history.
In BCM 2007, files attached to an email got stripped out once the original
email was deleted. This is a huge limitation in my opinion.

2. The ability to set user level access on shared databases.
Right now, the only way to share a BCM db is to share the entire thing. For
security reasons, it should be possible to set users with access levels so
they only see the parts of BCM records that they need to. For example, the
sales people only need to see records for leads and customers but should not
be able to view financial contacts or projects unrelated to them.

3. It would be nice if incoming emails that come from existing BCM contacts
are automatically tagged with the color code for the category they belong to
and also it would be nice to have a icon near the email that would take you
right to the BCM record right form the email so one does not have to pick
from the list or type the contacts name in the search field.

Anyway, thanks for the help and keep up the good work.

Jim

 

[Sun Embraser]

Hello,

Is there a version change log available for BCM 2010 Beta?

I downloaded the beta a few days ago and I'm anxious to see what is new in
it from BCM 2007 but would love to see the complete list rather than haveto
self discover everything.

Also, can anyone recommend the best place to provide feedback for the beta?
After installing the Office 2010 beta a "Smiles" and "Frown" icon in added to
the task tray which can be used to send in positive and negative feedbackbut
I'm not sure if this is only meant for the core office suite.

Just for kicks, here are some features I am hoping are available in the new
version of BCM.

1. Ability to store email file attachments in a contacts communications
history.
In BCM 2007, files attached to an email got stripped out once the original
email was deleted. This is a huge limitation in my opinion.

2. The ability to set user level access on shared databases.
Right now, the only way to share a BCM db is to share the entire thing. For
security reasons, it should be possible to set users with access levels so
they only see the parts of BCM records that they need to. For example, the
sales people only need to see records for leads and customers but should not
be able to view financial contacts or projects unrelated to them.

3. It would be nice if incoming emails that come from existing BCM contacts
are automatically tagged with the color code for the category they belongto
and also it would be nice to have a icon near the email that would take you
right to the BCM record right form the email so one does not have to pick
from the list or type the contacts name in the search field.

Anyway, thanks for the help and keep up the good work.

Jim

Hi Jim,
1. You should visit their team blog site: http://blogs.msdn.com/bcm/default..aspx,
and perhaps start by looking at this post: "Business Contact Manager
for Office 2010: New User Experience", and a few posts before and
after that one.
2. Yes, the Send-a-Smile and Frown is a good way to directly express
your feedback to the BCM team. It might not be as visible to the
general public as posting on the forums, but from what I heard, they
do read them or go through them... If you leave your e-mail address
when sending a smile/frown, you may be contacted by them directly (at
least that's what being said in one of the blog post comments). From
what I understand, if you leave words like "BCM" or "Business Contact
Manager" in your feedback, your feedback gets a higher chance to be
sent to the team directly.
3. I think the e-mail part is the same in 2010... I would agree with
you on this being very inconvenient, but if you think about this from
a storage point of view... if actual e-mails are copied as
attachments / actual duplications and attached to a contact's
communication history, instead of linkage as how it is currently done,
how much extra storage are you taxing on the server and on the SQL
database, if each of your co-workers has, say, around 500 MB of new
mails per year? How much slower is this system going to get after a
few years?... It becomes a harder choice if you are put in their
shoes when designing the software. So although I am with you, I tend
to agree with their choice on this subject.
4. People have started to ask for user-level access on a shared
database more and more, but it is not included in the 2010 version of
BCM. I don't know if they plan to include this useful feature in
future releases, but as far as I can tell, 2010 BCM does not have
this.
5. That's a good idea! Why don't you use Send-a-Smile and send it
in? Maybe they'll get back to you on that...

Hope that helps,
John
3.